Artist
Elisabeth Zwick
Painter, art therapist, and nomad.
Born in Vinschgau. Formed in Taiwan. Rooted in paint.
As a guest exhibitor to mark the International Women’s Day 2026 at BASIS, Silandro.
Biography
A life in search of expression
Elisabeth Zwick was born in Vinschgau, the westernmost valley of South Tyrol in northern Italy — a region that has always stood at the crossroads of cultures, languages and stories. Her artistic journey began in Venice in the late 1980s. After training as a sculptor in Laas in Vinschgau and in Berlin, she followed her longing for the unknown.
The journey
Taiwan
She learned Mandarin Chinese, Chinese painting, and calligraphy — discovering in Taiwan a new dimension of painting, one built on patience, ritual, and presence. She worked through workshops, courses, and countless experiments, always searching for what feels like authentic expression in the moment.
China
Elisabeth travelled through China as an interpreter and tour guide, constantly seeking new forms of expression and encountering different places and cultures.
England
She lived in England for several years, absorbing new influences and continuing to develop her visual language.
South Tyrol – the return
Elisabeth returned to the Vinschgau, where she embarked on new paths as a mother, teacher, and art therapist. Today, painting is her home. On large-format canvases, she creates worlds with acrylics and mixed media that are more than just colour and surface.
Practice
Art therapy & teaching
Alongside her studio practice, Elisabeth Zwick worked as an art therapist — a role that deepened her painting. She believes that engaging with art allows us to reinvent ourselves time and again, as individuals and as a society.
She teaches drawing and painting, bringing the same curiosity and rigour to her students that she brings to her own canvases.
In her own words
Artist statement
Art is not a luxury for me, but a necessity. There is no crisis in contemporary art; there is only what people make of it. Engaging with art allows us to reinvent ourselves time and again — as individuals and as a society. Art does not belong in the ivory towers of a select few. It belongs to the seekers, the questioners, the restless.
For me, art means resistance — not against something, but for a different way of thinking and living. Art as a political act that offers alternatives to the prevailing logic of performance and success. Art makes the invisible visible, what would otherwise slip away from us, creating spaces where the nomad in me steps out of the non-places of everyday life and, in contemplating art, can be fully present for a moment.
The finished painting, hanging on the wall in its two-dimensionality, is a point of calm. The longer I look at it, the more resonance it finds within me; it becomes three-dimensional, and my inner self becomes its sounding board. I let it affect me and know that it must be exactly as it is and cannot be changed further.
When a painting is finished, it is no longer mine. It becomes the sounding board for those who have set out on their own search.
As an art therapist, I combine my artistic work with a deep understanding of the transformative power of art. Art has the ability to compress our emotions down to their essence and express them outwardly, allowing us to view them with greater objectivity and detachment. Forms give shape to our emotions – they become a haven for thoughts and feelings that would otherwise overwhelm us.
I am art; art is me. Art as a way of life. A constant questioning: what is true, and what is not? I can choose to believe things – or I can engage with them in a consciously critical manner. I choose the latter. In doing so, I choose the freedom that only art can offer me. With this decision, I leave all safe ground behind and embrace the unknown.
My art thrives on slowness – a deliberate contrast to achievement, purposeful busyness, success and haste. It is shaped by doubt, by a constant balancing act between certainty and uncertainty. Here, in the unfinished, in the fragile, space is created for something new. Slowness as resistance to acceleration, doubt as creative drive. Inspired by Karl Popper’s principle ‘Let the hypothesis die’, the following applies to me: “On the canvas, anything is possible.” Here, experimentation becomes a principle, failure an opportunity. Art becomes a political act. Art as a playing field for hypotheses.
My works are influenced not only by visual art but also by literature. The thoughts and emotions I explore artistically often find their counterpart in literary figures, whether in mythology, fairy tales or contemporary literature, as seen, for example, in the two series of images, “The Weird Sisters” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”.
Elisabeth Zwick (May 2026)
Studio & exhibitions
In the studio and beyond
